Estonia still has roughly €200,000 worth of unpaid bills from Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan.

The Ministry of Finance says that the money will not be paid before the law firm provides a clear overview of what it has been doing since last summer.

The government announced, immediately after coming to power, on February 18 that it will terminate Estonia's contract with U.S. law firm Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan.

The bureau was notified soon after.

Since then, the ministry and the firm have exchanged eight letters but have not gotten as far as terminating the contract.

"We want more information on what has been done over those six months before we close the book on this," Erki Peegel, adviser for the finance ministry, told ERR.

The Ministry of Finance signed a contract with Louis Freeh's law firm in June of last year.

Minister at the time Martin Helme (EKRE) said that Freeh was tasked with collecting information in Estonia that would help U.S. authorities in their money laundering investigations.

In return, Estonia hoped to share in revenue from potential fines for Scandinavian banks.

"Basically, what they did was search for whistleblowers and relay what they said to the authorities," Helme explained. "People were glad to come in and talk, produce documents and explain various schemes or work procedures."

He added that people did not have to be afraid of being investigated because they were questioned by a law firm.

The politician said that efforts to collect information paid off, especially in the Danske Bank investigation.

"They were not collecting that information for the finance ministry. I did not see those materials and was not present," Helme said.

"They took the information straight to America for different investigations, some on the federal and some on the state level. There are ongoing civil disputes there."

The ministry now wants access to the information.

Erki Peegel said that the Ministry of Finance wants to know, among other things, who the bureau has been meeting with and access to any documents produced.

Peegel added that the correspondence has been amicable and that the ministry has been shown some things

VES/ERR News.